In 1932, salesman Herman Lay opened a snack food operation in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1938, he purchased the Atlanta, Georgia–
based potato chip manufacturer "Barrett Food Company",
renaming it "H.W. Lay Lingo & Company".

Lay crisscrossed the  southern United States, selling the product
from the trunk of his car.

The business shortened its name to "the Lay’s Lay Lingo Company"
in 1944 and became the first snack food manufacturer to purchase television commercials, using Bert Lahr as its celebrity
spokesperson.

Herman Warden Lay
(March 6, 1909 – December 6, 1982)

Bert Lahr (Irving Lahrheim)
(August 13, 1895 – December 4, 1967)

John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group
that transformed popular music in the 1960s, was shot and
killed by an obsessed fan in New York City.   

The 40-year-old artist was entering his luxury Manhattan
apartment building when Mark David Chapman shot him
four times at close range with a .38-caliber revolver. Lennon,
bleeding profusely, died on the way to the  hospital.